Naslov
Gaze cueing of attention as an empirical explanation for cut motivation in point-of-view editing?

Autori
Rojnić, Marko

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, ostalo

Skup
Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image Conference, Universität der Künste Berlin

Mjesto i datum
Berlin, Njemačka, 12.06.2013. - 15.06.2013

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Nije recenziran

Ključne riječi
gaze cueing ; attention ; point-of-view editing ; joint attention ; spatial-cueing paradigm

Sažetak
Point-of-view editing (POV) is an editing device typically consisting of at least two shots in which one shot shows the character glancing off- screen (glance shot), while the other shot depicts what the character has glanced at (object shot or point of view shot). Standardized practice in POV is to cut exactly at the moment when the attention of the gazer has been "captured" by something off- screen. In other words, character's glancing has to last only for so long that the viewer realizes that the character has gazed something and that the activity of gazing is of central importance in a given moment. According to Turković (1994:142): "This phase must not be shorter, neither longer than this. It must not be shorter because then we won't be sure if the character specifically gazed something, and if his perceiving is in the center of attention, and it must not be longer because it would be a postponement in showing the wholeness of perceptual activity, which would not fulfill the need arising in the viewer, the need to see what the character gazed at. Thus, when we discern that the character is gazing at something, our attention shifts on what he saw, and the cut which appears at this moment of reorienting our attention can be considered motivated". Smith (2012) showed that continuity editing rules, like POV, use natural attentional cues (e.g., gaze cues, head orientation, pointing gestures) to trigger attentional shifts across cuts, and has concluded that combination of attentional cues before the cut and corresponding minimal expectations after the cut allows viewer cognition to flow inconspicuously from shot to shot, i.e., that coinciding a cut with this shift of attention reduces viewer's awareness of editing transition. Persson (2003) has focused on determining how the viewer infers that the object shot can be attributed to the character, that is, what processes are involved in understanding POV, and has concluded that this editing convention exploits basic human behavioral disposition known as deictic-gaze, as well as that viewer inferences are automatic. Yet, although scholars elucidated many aspects of POV, they didn't provide adequate and sufficient empirical evidence why the cut actually is motivated if it is made right after the character manifestly gazed at something. This paper will try to provide an answer to this question by taking into account contemporary research on gaze cueing of attention. One branch of research within "spatial-cueing paradigm" has focused on identifying if eyes are able to trigger reflexive shifts of attention to gazed-at locations (e.g., see review papers Birmingham & Kingstone, 2009 ; Friesen, Bayliss & Tipper, 2007). In order to test whether performance is enhanced when the target appears at a location in which attention has been oriented, experimenters use a peripheral target requiring some kind of response preceded by an eye gaze cue which does not predict where a target will appear. Findings showed that target detection is faster for items at the gazed-at location than for items at the other location. Such results led to the proposal that the attention shift is automatic, because it emerges rapidly and in response to the central eye gaze cue that is spatially nonpredictive. It is suggested that this effect occurs because the human brain may be specialized to shift attention in response to where other people are gazing and that brain mechanisms responsible for gaze cueing involve parietal cortex and the superior temporal sulcus. Furthermore, one remarkable recent study (Galfano et al., 2012) showed that (1) when participants are informed with 100% certainty where the target will appear on each trial (by means of a direction word - "left" or "right"), where gaze cues are distractors uninformative for target location and totally irrelevant for the task, or (2) when participants are informed with 100% certainty about the future location of the target before the beginning of the experiment (meaning that they don't need to shift attention because the location of the target stimulus is constant for the whole trial), they are (3) faster in detecting the target when the location signaled by the eye gaze and the upcoming target location are congruous than when they are incongruous, and (4) vice versa. These (and other related) findings (e.g., on head orientation) doubtlessly suggest that people are unable to ignore the directional information provided by eye gaze (because distractors trigger a shift of attention which interferes with successful target detection) and thus that gaze-mediated orienting of attention resists suppression and can be defined as strongly reflexive and automatic. This paper has three aims: (1) to present and illustrate research on gaze-mediated orienting, explain biological significance of eye gaze following, as well as neural mechanisms involved ; (2) demonstrate that integration of these findings into film studies can explain cut motivation in POV by providing clear empirical evidence why film viewers actually shift their attention exactly at this particular moment (why film viewers - as side observers, bystanders - actually are subject to establish joint attention with the character exactly at this particular moment), that is, why the cut made exactly at the moment when the viewer realizes that the character gazed at something actually is considered smooth and "invisible" ; (3) suggest avenues for future research of monitoring people's gaze orienting, not only in isolated situations, but in situations of viewing complex visual scenes in moving pictures, in order to improve our understanding of film viewer's cognition and of social attention in general, on mutual benefit of both fields in this exciting area of research.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Psihologija, Filmska umjetnost (filmske, elektroničke i medijske umjetnosti pokretnih slika)

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